


Here, at the End of All Things

by undersail2013



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Implied Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, M/M, Sappy Ending, allusions to possible dub/noncon, implied Adam/Michael, so many angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1297432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undersail2013/pseuds/undersail2013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's tied up and an angel wants to get inside him; so what else is new?  A s9 finale...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here, at the End of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> fwiw, the dubcon is meant to consensual, but being rather open to interpretation, I wanted to be sure to tag it...

A rough hand stroking his cheek stirs Sam to consciousness.

“Wake up, Sammy,” a familiar voice purrs.

His eyes snap open, incredulous. “Dean?” 

“Not Dean,” and whoever-it-is wearing Dean grins mirthlessly. “Don’t you recognize me, Sam?”

He gapes, trying to remember how the hell he got here, tied to a broken-down caster-less old office chair in a, must be a warehouse of some kind. No, not tied. Bound. He can feel strands of, something. Magic? It’s wrapped around his wrists and ankles, holding him down. “The red cap?”

“So that’s what that meddlesome little creature was,” nodding at a small pile of bloody rags several yards away. “I’m shocked it gave you so much trouble; maybe you _shouldn’t_ be hunting alone. No, Sam, I am miles above that little cockroach.” He smiles, and this time it reaches his eyes, only to glint malevolently. “I’m more the kind of guy you’d happily go to Hell for.”

Sam freezes. “No,” he whispers, all the old terror flooding back. “No. You’re in the Cage.”

“Am I? I think you’ll find I’m not, Sammy.” He tilts his head. “I’m free.”

“How?” Sam snarls from between gritted teeth.

He lifts the cuff of Dean's grey henley. “My Mark. My very own Get Out of Jail Free card. I gave it to Cain so long ago, and now your brother bears it. Well, not your brother anymore.” 

As Lucifer stops talking, the face he wears contorts, and a horrendous animal scream rips from the throat. Sam almost hears his own name buried under the agony.

“Dean!”

Luci slides back into the driver’s seat. “He’s in terrible pain, Sam, and you’re the only one who can save him.”

“What? How?” 

“How? Oh Sammy, do you really not understand?” He twists Dean’s face into an expression of sadness. “After all that time in the Cage, I thought you knew.” The lips quirk into a sad, almost wistful smile. “I miss you, Sam; I want you back.”

“Never!”

“Don’t say things like that, Sam. Not after all the good times we’ve had. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what it was like, for us, in Hell?”

Sam closes his eyes and sets his jaw. “There was never any ‘us,’ Lucifer.”

The fallen archangel steps closer. Peers down as, blindly, Sam nevertheless lifts his face to Lucifer’s. “It’s okay, Sam,” he murmurs, “your brother can’t hear us; he’ll never know.”

“It’s not that,” Sam hisses.

“Then what is it?” he asks, hurt.

Sam opens his eyes, tries to face the devil; he really does. He wants to meet Lucifer’s eyes like, well, like he did all those years ago when he first said “Yes.” Bravely. Wants to meet those eyes and tell him “No,” to demand the return of his brother. But the truth is so much bigger than he cares to remember. If he looks into those eyes, it will all return. All of it. 

Sam’s eyes drop to his lap.

“What is it, Sam?” he repeats, softly, tenderly even. “Did you forget? Did you forget how I saved you from Michael? Not once, not twice, but time and again, I protected you from him. I took you under my wing, shielded you from his attentions to Adam. And when your little brother lay gasping and wrung out, and Michael seeking a new target, I hid you from his eyes. Every time. Because I love you, Sam. I love you now as I loved you then. You are my one true vessel, most beloved of my grace.”

“I can’t listen to this.”

Lucifer raises his head, squares his shoulders. “You would deny it now. You would deny me now.”

“I will deny it to my dying breath.”

For a moment, the temperature plummets. Anger brims in Lucifer’s eyes, and Sam is afraid. But the room warms as quickly as it froze, and Luci’s demeanor shifts. Right hand to his chest, he scoffs, or is it more of a sigh? “You wound me, Sam. Truly, I don’t understand why you would-”

“Because you’re the fucking Devil, Lucifer. Because no one could admit to, to whatever that was. Because it was Hell and-” 

He smirks. “Because what happens in Hell stays in Hell.”

The glare Sam gives Lucifer could peel paint. “I wouldn’t use those words exactly, no.”

“You gave yourself to me freely.”

“I gave-?”

“When you said ‘Yes,’ my beautiful idiot. You gave over your body to me. And when that runty little brother of mine snatched back your bod, your soul remained behind in my care. The one piece of you that didn’t belong to me. And yet,” Lucifer chuckles, “and yet, in time, you gave that to me as well.”

“I never-”

“No, not to keep. You are your own man, always have been, even before the old man reclaimed it and shoved it back into your meatsuit. No, Sam, your soul was never mine in any legal sense, but it was mine to care for, to cherish, yes, to love. And I did, Sam. I hope you remember what it was to rest the warm elastic skin of your soul on the cool leather of my wings.”

Like a phantom limb, Sam can almost feel the membrane caressing his shoulder again, and he shivers. He says nothing, but as he lowers his eyes again, they glisten. 

Privately, Luci nods. “It’s enough,” he whispers. He paces some moments before he speaks again. “I wish my brother had earned your brother’s love. This whole wrestling match might have gone so differently if Michael hadn’t sent incompetent flunkies to threaten Dean, to bully him into a sterile surrender. A heart like this one,” gesturing inward and shaking his head. “Had Michael approached it with all the love he purports to bear Father’s flawed things, this starved little creature might have bestowed on him an eternity of devotion.” He shakes his head again. “Instead it squanders its strength on a broken angel.”

Sam’s head snaps up. “You know about that?”

If an eye roll can be audible, this one is. “Oh my Father who aren’t in Heaven, _everyone_ knows about that, Sam. There are bacteria on the rings of Saturn that know about that.”

A goofy smile crosses Sam’s face. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Lucifer lets the smirk on his borrowed face drain away slowly. “But. Back to the important matters. Back to us.”

Sam scowls. 

“Sam. Sammy Sammy Sammy.” He crouches before Sam, torso crowding against lanky limbs. His hands skim just north of the denim-covered thighs, the flannel-wrapped abs, only barely avoiding contact, before settling on the Winchester boy’s meaty biceps. Sam flinches, but it’s more to do with the shape of the angel than he cares to admit. “Isn’t there anything I can say to win you back?”

“No.”

“No? Not your brother’s immediate relief? Not sweet nothings?”

“No.”

Luci leans so close to Sam, focuses his every fiber on Sam. He drops his voice, almost incomprehensibly low. “What if, what if I swore to take his memories of you? He’ll never mourn you. He won’t even know you.”

“I will never let you do that,” a voice growls, clamping a burning hand down over Lucifer’s right forearm.

“Unhand me, brother,” the devil hisses.

Sam goggles at Cas, speechless.

“You will release my friends and return to your own domain. Now, Lucifer, or I will destroy you.”

Lucifer laughs but he does not loosen his grip, neither physical nor interdimensional, on either Winchester. “You are but a child, Castiel. You could not hope to challenge me as a seraph; what will you do now? For you now to pretend to the rank of even the lowly cherubim would heap shame on their whole holy order. You are trash, Castiel, an insignificant nothing, a failed human as surely as you ever failed as an angel. What can you do but submit or die?”

“I did not submit to Raphael and I will not submit to you.” Barely are the words free of his lips, but an inhuman wailing rings through the space, and Cas drops to his knees. It mixes suddenly with the same devastating caterwaul of Dean’s tortured scream.

In Sam’s head, he hears an old familiar voice, the same flat Midwestern drawl that sang him “Stairway to Heaven” fifty, a hundred, a thousand times in a row. _Hear how your brothers suffer,_ it says. _You can stop this, Sam, you can free them. Let me only have you, and I will wipe their memories. They’ll forget this nomad’s life; they’ll settle down. What does he call it, an apple-pie life? Your poor brother, he suffers so much. Anxiety, depression, post-traumatic, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Have you never wondered why he drinks? He never wanted any of this, and he never wanted it for you, either. Give him a white picket fence and a quiet life with pleasant dreams and a handsome husband to last him all the rest of his days. Won’t you give him that?_

Eyes pleading, Sam begs Lucifer to stop. “I can’t. We need each other. Dean and Cas, I can’t give them up.” As he speaks, his eyes harden. “They hold on. They fight. They fight for everything. They fight and they never let go. And I am strong for them. I can save them. I can save them, if they will save themselves.” Sam looks from his brother’s wracked face to Cas’ dull but stony expression. “They can do it,” Sam says into Cas’ almost lifeless eyes, and he sets his teeth, clenching his jaw tight. “Do it, Cas.”

“Do what?” Lucifer asks, too late.

Cas is not catatonic. He is awake, alive, strong, and thrusting his left arm deep into Sam’s thorax. 

White light engulfs the three figures, flowing from Sam through Castiel until pouring, ripping hot and bubbling, out of the hand still clutching the Mark near Dean’s elbow. White light, searing through Dean’s arm, boiling away the skin, charring muscle, blistering bone. The heavy scent of barbecued flesh mingles with the clean ozone tang of incinerated grace, filling their nostrils and mouths, permeating their hair and clothes and skin. 

Slowly, it occurs to Sam that the world is dark and the pain is gone. He opens his eyes. He is weak, but he’s awake now. His restraints are gone, too. Dean is slumped forward into his lap, which is a little uncomfortable, until he notices the smoking hole in his brother’s right arm. “Cas?” Where’s Cas?

“’M here,” grits a voice like gravel. Cas is sprawled on the ground a few paces away from Sam’s chair, like he’s been forcibly thrown. “Did it work?”

“I, I don’t know. He’s alive. He’s injured. It’s bad, Cas, come see.”

The angel sits up slowly, rubbing the back of his head. As he pitches forward to stand, though, he groans and grips his skull.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he lies, struggling to his feet, only to sink back down to his knees. “Fuck,” he mutters, taking in the full measure of the damage wrought on Dean’s flesh. “Sam. I didn’t know.”

“But you can fix him, right?”

Cas meets Sam’s eyes momentarily before letting them drift back to the ravaged limb. “Sam, I-” He swallows. “I, um, I have nothing left. Or so little as to make no difference.”

“You’re powered down?”

He shakes his head. “I’m drained.”

“Cas.”

“It’s fine. I thought this might happen.”

“You should have said-”

“What would I have said?” he asks, eyes flashing. Same old scary Cas, grace or no. “I couldn’t let him stay in Dean, and I couldn’t let him take you, either.” He steadies himself somewhat. “Truth is, Sam, this was, this was probably the best of all possible scenarios. I might have killed you or Dean or, hell, all four of us could have been destroyed in a cataclysm, had your soul exploded.”

Sam chuckles through a sour smile. “Yeah, you always forget to mention that part.”

“My apologies.” He shuffles around Dean, loops the unconscious man’s good arm carefully around his waist, gently drapes his torso against Cas’ own. He sits back awkwardly, jostling Dean a bit, and though the patient grunts slightly and shivers, he does not stir. Cas peeks at Sam again, but the younger man is too weak to do much more than frown over the proceedings. “Sorry.” Cas tucks a flap of his coat around the both of them, then lifts Dean’s right arm between his two hands, assessing for any place he can be of service.

“Anything?”

Cas hushes Sam. “I’m working.” Sam can see Cas’ eyes roving all over the wound, though nothing seems to register. A deep sigh breaks from the angel (former angel?), and he shakes his head. “I may as well,” he mutters.

“May as well what?”

His eyes drop closed as he sandwiches the wound delicately between his two hands. He murmurs a few syllables, probably Enochian, but far too quietly for Sam to decipher. A feeble light illuminates the spaces between Cas’ fingers and makes the tissue of his hands glow pink. Cas strains to maintain the thin light, struggles several minutes, his breathing erratic and his voice wavering alarmingly as he resumes chanting. 

“Cas?” Dean whimpers the name. 

“Dean!”

“Cas.” He passes out again.

He moves his hand aside to inspect Dean’s arm and actually breathes a sigh of relief: where the Mark of Cain had been, where a gaping smoldering crater had been, Dean has thin, pink new skin, a painful yet wholesome scorch mark in the shape of Cas’ palm. He slips his fingers between Dean’s and brings the half-healed wound to his lips. He can’t tear his gaze away from his last miracle, from Dean resting comfortably in his arms. “Sam,” his voice breaking as he watches the gentle rise and fall of Dean's chest. “He’ll be okay.”

Not that Sam cares if Cas catches him crying, but he’s only too pleased that the tears in his eyes pass unnoticed. “Yeah, Cas. He’s gonna be okay. We’re all okay.”


End file.
